by Nigel Dennis
He told her.
“I’m taking the train,” she said.
He gave astonished exclamations. But she said firmly, holding up one hand: “No, let me talk: I’ll tell you.”
“Is Larry all right? That’s what I want to know.”
“Of course Larry is all right. Would I be going away if he weren’t?”
While he kept an obedient silence, she looked him over in a manner that reminded him of the morning when she dismissed him as a lover and embraced him as a friend. “I am sorry we did not see more of each other, Jimmy,” she said: “but that was your decision, not mine. Never mind: what you demand now is an explanation, and I must do my best to satisfy you.”
She stared at him so firmly that suddenly an odd bit of book-knowledge struck him all of a heap. This was the moment, of all moments, when she would announce that she was pregnant, and he a father—a state of maturity that would have filled him with pride in the good old days of July the Fourth, but which at the end of August evoked only ominous tales of the capture of prancing highwaymen by implacable female victims—ah! if she only knew what a bewildered little wretch I have become myself, he thought. He looked her up and down gloomily, thinking: So this is my future wife; how very curious: divorce proceedings will be instigated; we shall live together in one house forever after: dear me!
“On our very first evening together,” she said, “before I had any means of confirming it, I knew from what you said that Max was a decent, loyal man.”
Good God! Max is the father: a married man: oh, the cheap crook; but how relieved I am!
He put out his hand and pressed her arm affectionately.
“And I have never changed my mind on that score,” she said. “And since he is devoted to Larry, I think he will be much better able to stay with him than I am. Somebody else should do it for a change,” she added angrily: “I’ve had ten years of it, and what have I got now?”
He now knew that she was not pregnant by anyone, simply very much afraid; he began to feel a strong attachment to her, and his old dislike of her tyrannical husband came to the surface again. “Has he started in on you again—already?” he asked, thinking of the helpless figure on the stretcher.
She did not answer this question directly. She merely said: “Larry never changes. He is always the same and always will be, and I have had enough.”
“Where are you going?”
“Home, of course. Are you shocked? I’m sorry if you are, because I rather depended on you to understand. You are the one person who knows all that I have gone through, and that if I am going to drop it now, it’s because there is nothing else to do. Or don’t you think so?”
“I honestly don’t know what to think,” he said, realizing at last that she was actually and secretly running away, certain of nothing except that he was totally up-ended in a chaos that was incomprehensible, flabbergasting, and devoid of anything that might be called an idea or a principle—a chaos entirely of his own choosing. “Why did you stop to tell me?” he asked.
She hesitated. “There were two reasons. First, I couldn’t leave without telling someone why, and you were the only one who could possibly understand. Second, I had to leave without telling Larry. That meant, I couldn’t very well ask him for assistance, for money … Yes, I know what you think. You think the money reason was the real one. Well, I can’t help it if you do. At least you can believe that it’s no pleasure for me to go down on my knees to you and beg.”
The very idea was so shocking that he hastily opened his wallet and took out all the paper money.
“Not all that!”
“Go on; take it. I still have Travellers’ Cheques.”
“How are you going to cash them? There’s no bank here any more. Sometimes, I think you simply don’t realize that you are not at home, Jimmy.”
“Oh, I’ll manage,” he said, ready to pay anything rather than get involved in any more personal puzzles. But she counted the notes carefully and pushed some back. “All I need is my fare; and I’ll return that too, once I am home. I am very, very grateful, Jimmy.”
“When I left home,” he said, “I was sure that I was completely muddle-headed, and I was sure that I could straighten myself out. Now, I’m so completely at sea that I am sure of nothing. I scarcely know who I am. I can hardly believe that two months ago I was a real person. How I hate to see you go. Is Hitler coming? How I wish I could travel back with you!”
“Do you think that that would look nice?” she asked, rather shocked. “I hope, after you’ve been so loving and generous, you won’t mind my telling you that you will never straighten yourself out until you really apply yourself to learning proper manners. You have a kind, affectionate heart and plenty of intelligence, but you have simply got to learn that you can’t just summon people to your bedroom or dash off with them to America as the whim takes you. But I shall not worry about you. I know you will come out all right in the end.”
“I guess that when I reach home again and have a chance to think things over peacefully….”
“Of course. Don’t look so bewildered: you’ve all your life ahead of you…. Now just one more thing, Jimmy. Max is sure not to understand how I could go away like this. If you get a chance, say a word or two for me. If you like, you can tell him the truth—if he wants to know why I came to tell you of all people.”
“I guess I’ll just see what happens,” he said vaguely. “But to tell you the truth,” he confessed with sudden alarm, “I’m scared of Max when he gets in a rage.”
“Scared of Max? Why, it would never occur to me!”
“Because you’re a woman,” he said.
She glanced through the contents of her pocketbook and said: “Well, Jimmy, I think it’s time.”
He hated the thought of being left alone again, and said pleadingly: “You have a full half-hour. Stay a few minutes more.”
“No, truly. I hate being just on time for a train. That’s because I’m a woman too.”
At the end of the side-street she stopped, collected her courage, squeezed his hand and held him back, looking anxiously over the open territory. Then, she stepped smartly on to the dusty road, and bunched up into the smallest size quickly reached the shelter of the little station-house.
He leaned awhile against the last wall of the town, indulging his loneliness, but on hearing the whistle of the train as it left the village before Mell, he shuddered, and hurried back to the tavern. Everyone was speaking the unintelligible Polish language, and he was brought a staggering plateful of the common supper of pigs’ feet, potatoes and cabbage. He brooded over Harriet; he recalled her departing image; at last he began to think of her trim little travelling-suit, her orderly pocketbook, the confidence she had shown in depending on him for money, the ease with which she had obtained it; he found it hard to link all these things with the child-wife who had begged for a “tiny more candles.” All at once he began to feel rather a fool, as if he had been used; next moment he was frightened and angry to think that she had passed smoothly out of the picture, leaving him the gracious favour of handing on the whole matter to a friend who detested him. By God! I’m not going to stay any longer either, he thought: the sooner I get back to a sane world the better: like hell I’m going to “explain” anything to anyone: it’s sealed lips and the morning train for me.
Rising indignantly, he rushed out of the tavern and down the damp and dusty street: everything looked so gloomy and frightening and he felt so resentful and remorseful that he could hardly wait to quit this world of savage friends and ailing tyrants and reach a place where he could hang his guilty conscience and muddled head out to air.
A bulb, burning over the entrance of the hotel, lit up the marble steps: the rest of the square was dark. A Baby Austin stood at the foot of the steps, and a young man was tying some large suitcases to the rear grid and observing the depressing effect on the back tyres. Standing calmly under the light-bulb were the manager, a woman who was presumably his wife, and two children
primly dressed in English jackets and felt hats.
But what struck Morgan was the manager’s extraordinary appearance. Although it was a warm evening he wore a giant greatcoat of Canadian beaver, which covered him from ears to calves and doubled his stature, and, as though this were still inadequate to his prospects, he carried over one arm a tweed topcoat and a heavy winter-coat with a velvet collar. He and his family now descended the steps and, with the rubbery magic of fakirs, inveigled their persons into the auto’s tiny frame, followed by the young driver. The car then moved away at walking-speed, its tyres curled up agonizingly, its rims clinking musically on the cobbles.
He ran upstairs thinking: I’ll make it a getaway tomorrow … just push a note under Max’s door…. What a little bitch to hog the only train tonight!
But, alas! the door of the adjoining room was open, and Divver seated in a chair, reading a Polish newspaper. The light fell on the circles under his eyes, he gripped and looked at the newspaper with such concentration that he seemed to be advancing into a predetermined form of rigid insanity. Suddenly his head jerked to one side: he glared at Morgan with rage and shouted in a sharp, cracked voice:
“Who paid my hotel bill?”
“Why, I did.”
“By what right?”
“The clerk asked me.”
“Am I a penniless cripple? Am I unemployed? Did I tell you to spend your mother’s money on me? Keep out of my affairs! Keep out of my way! I can run my own life.”
He rose to his feet, caught the door in his fist and slammed it with a tremendous crash.
At the same moment, all the lights went out. Morgan ran to a corner of the room, thinking: alone in pitch dark with a lunatic; that is the last straw. He heard Divver cursing and barging around in the next room; at which he hurriedly opened the door into the passage. But the passage, too, was in darkness, and so, as far as he could see, was the whole town.
Footsteps sounded in the passage; he heard Simon’s voice asking out of the darkness: “Monsieur? Herr Divver?”
Divver opened his door, and Simon asked: “The power has stopped, sir. Do you have a flashlight or a candle?”
He heard Divver answer: “No. And if I did have one, I wouldn’t loan it. Is he afraid of the dark too? And don’t call me Herr Divver.”
“Mr. Divver; his wife is still absent.”
“Tell him to look under the bed for her.”
After a pause, Divver said in a changed voice: “Pardon me, Simon … no excuse for picking on you … nothing you have done.”
“Sir, I would be grateful if you would accompany me to the suite. I am alone, without help.” His voice was strained but dignified and, comparing himself with the old man, Morgan blushed in the darkness for his own panic.
“Is he the same as he was this afternoon?” Divver asked. “Physically the same is what I want to know.”
“How could I tell, sir? I am not a doctor.”
“No, Simon, I am very sorry, but it’s no use your coming to me.”
“One moment if you please, sir,” the old man said, and went off down the passage. Morgan could hear Divver standing in the open doorway, breathing hard. A few dim squares of lamp and candlelight appeared in the dark windows of the town.
Simon returned, and said: “He is likely to be dying, sir. You must fetch the doctor, sir. In one hour you can reach Tutin and be back with him. The ministry car is below.”
“Like hell I will. If he wants to die, he can go ahead.”
“Or you can face God with your conscience, sir.”
“I never had a God, and I lost my conscience weeks ago, when I let him change my life … O.K., I’ll go … Jesus Christ, you’ve got some nerve, you old bastard: you’re worth him and me put together. But don’t you ever come to me again like this. Do you understand? No more appeals. I’m through with him, dead or alive.”
Morgan heard them walk away together and, later, the sound of a car in the square, shifting violently from second into high. He was frightened, but not too frightened to sleep; he would have been overjoyed if some good friend like the undertaker had come to console him with protection and sensible explanations: but as it was, he was able to think of the sick engineer, the ancient manservant, the thousands of armed soldiers advancing toward the town, and to conclude: thank God, I am not all alone.
*
He got up as soon as it was light and speedily finished his packing. His fingers were trembling; his body felt like a balloon of gas shaken by the loud, hard beats of his heart. He wrote a note to Divver saying: “So long, Max. Have taken the morning train, will go straight to the consulate. Thanks for everything.” Then he started to dress.
Through the window he saw two men walking quietly down Bread Street, looking, at such a distance, like midgets. Half-way down, one of them extended his arm, a steel bar slid out of his sleeve, he pried a cobblestone out of the middle of the street, and dropped it into a sack which the other midget held open. Standing off, the man whisked the sack around his head and lobbed it over the sidewalk. There was a crash of glass; the little man retrieved the sack and threw it again; again there was a glassy crash. Both midgets then walked through a gaping hole into the interior of the shop; they returned in a few moments with the sack full, and coolly disappeared.
The plunderers were hardly out of sight—and Morgan standing, his tie half-tied, staring after them—when a siren sounded over the power plant and screamed at full strength for a half-minute.
Morgan waited for no more. He opened the door and ran out, a suitcase in each hand.
But he had barely turned toward the stairs when he heard a high voice, and there, cantering after him, was old Simon’s haunting, exasperating figure. “Mr. Divver? Where is Mr. Divver?” cried the old man angrily.
“What! You know, don’t you? Did he not come back?”
“No, sir; where is he?”
“Don’t ask me. In his room?”
“He has run away, too.” The old man hit Divver’s door with his fist, threw it open, and turned on Morgan again: “No, sir, he has never returned … Very well, you must come instead.” He caught Morgan by the wrist.
“For what?”
“You sit with him for ten minutes, sir—no more, I promise you. You were his wife’s friend: now, you can repay him. Ten minutes, while I make arrangements.”
“Is he really dying?”
“No, but I cannot make him hear me.”
In the drawing-room, the curtains were closed tight, the place was still in darkness.
“Who is it?” cried the engineer from the bedroom. “Divver? Wer da?”
Simon pushed Morgan into the bedroom.
“You, James,” said the engineer, “well, well!”
He was lying in the middle of the familiar bed, propped up by pillows, wearing his gold glasses and pale blue pyjamas. His white mane, pressed out of shape by sleep, rested against the headboard just at the mouth of the embroidered trumpet which Cupid was blowing into his ear. He looked like any prosperous businessman, caught in an unusual stage of convalescence. He was unshaved, his topsheet and blanket were pushed down below his knees, an ashtray rested on an undersheet smeared with ash. In his hands was a Tauchnitz book entitled The Public Papers and Addresses of Albert, The Prince Consort, yellowed by years of exposure, unpurchasable by even the most bored and desperate tourist. Tapping it, the engineer said, in his strong, normal voice: “A highly intelligent man: those who sneer at him are ignoramuses, believe me. Sit down, James.”
Laying the book away, the engineer sighed, and seemed to reflect on a possible choice of words. At last he assumed an expression of humorous woe, and in a voice exactly attuned to his expression, said: “Well, James, my boy, the old mountain-lion has received a mortal blow. They’ve got him on his back at last.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” said Morgan.
“And so am I, James, so am I: but we cannot deny plain fact. The doctor tells me that I shall soon be up and around once more, but I canno
t share his optimism.” He sighed again. “Divver has left?”
“I have no idea where he is, Mr. Streeter.”
“Pooh, pooh: call me Larry, James … Ah, well; he had the right to walk out; he has many active years ahead of him. And so here we are all alone, you and I, with our mutual friend departed.”
He looked at Morgan with an agreeable smile that managed to suggest that they were mutually betrayed and, consequently, partners. Morgan was terrified, and said hurriedly: “I hope to take the train this morning, Mr. Streeter.”
“Of course; quite right,” said the engineer, nodding and smiling so warmly that Morgan felt ashamed. “Is there anything I can do for you, sir?” he asked.
“I think not, James. I must draw on my own resources now. Yes, I must rebuild my life with my own hands. Have you by any chance seen my wife?”
After hesitating, Morgan replied: “Yes, Mr. Streeter. She took the train last night.”
“Did she borrow money from our friend Max?”
“No, from me, sir.”
“Well, don’t look so downcast, James. No doubt she spun you some story that you couldn’t resist. Am I right? … Never mind; I am embarrassing you. Did she happen to say where she was going? Now, James, don’t you answer me if you don’t wish to.”
“She’s gone back home.”
“And left you ashamed of being her accomplice.” The engineer smiled genially. “Don’t give it a thought, James. I’ve lived long enough to know how these things happen … Well, the old lion must rise up alone, it seems. How about a cup of coffee before your train, James? Of course. Simon!”
There was no answer.
“Well, we must wait. What is the noise outside?”
Morgan parted the curtains, and cried: “My God, it’s the evacuation practice!”
“But real this time, eh?” said the engineer.
There was no doubt of it. The organized crowd that had shown so white against the gaslight was now picking its way in clear view into the most mixed collection of real private cars and trucks. The mayor sat as before under the lime tree; and as Morgan watched, his jaw hanging, the stretcher bearers ran smartly out of a baroque house and, under the eyes of two policemen and his secretary, inserted the old body of Mr. Grieg into the lower berth of a genuine ambulance.